The New Waves

For a while I have had a strange infatuation with New Wave, shoegaze, and post-punk music. It's always been somewhat pleasing to my ears. Every time I listen to it, I picture a music video on the early days of MTV, where there is dark lighting, and a man with really wild and colorful hair wearing over-the-top makeup, and sometimes you can't tell if the person singing (by voice or appearance) is a male or female.

To distinguish different types of music genres from each other, I normally close my eyes and see what I can visualize.

New Wave

Normally pretty upbeat; Easy to dance to, Use of synthesizers and/or guitars make a quirky melody. Song lyrics are mostly symbolic for something else, like love, revenge, politics, etc.

Musicians: Bow wow wow, The B-52's, culture club, The talking heads, New Young Pony Club, Foster The People.

Post-Punk

Also pretty upbeat, mainly use guitars, lyrics are usually based on love and they even title their songs after the people they're in love with, most of the songs are of darker nature than New Wave, sounding like something you'd hear on Halloween. The basic foundation to goth music, and not those emo losers, either; straight up Gothic people with pale skin, cross and crucifix accessories and extremely teased hair.The kind of music Edgar Allen Poe would love.

Musicians: A Place To Bury Strangers, Siouxie and the Banshees, Joy Division, The Cure, bauhau5, some songs by Metric.

Shoegaze

More mellow. Can be described as new wave and post-punk combined. The songs contain like, 50 guitars all on a different key, but come together to make one sound (kind of like a modern opera), The lyrics are ambient, usually talking about nature and feelings, very thereputic, best listened to when looking at a sunrise, a snowfall, the sea, or a nice rainy day (or when listening to Tamaryn, a sunset or the desert)

Musicians: The Daysleepers, Apollo Heights, Tamaryn, The Radio Dept, M83..